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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28140195">Appleseed</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/jeien/pseuds/jeien'>jeien</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Sound Horizon (Albums)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - 19th Century, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Decapitation, Implied Headfricking, Implied Necrophilia, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Murder, Strangulation</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 15:35:30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>6,173</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28140195</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/jeien/pseuds/jeien</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>He was still young and round-cheeked, moments after falling into the small pond at the back of the estate, when they first met. He should have known it then. After all, the estate always brings broken people to its doorstep. </p><p>(In which Elef is caught in a gambit and makes a choice.)</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Amethystos | Elefseus/Blue Prince (Märchen Album)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Appleseed</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/kizunagatari/gifts">kizunagatari</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Hi Darling, my anniversary gift to you is a Wolfsbane continuation lol.</p><p>So it's been about 8 years since I actually wrote Wolfsbane (6 since I posted it onto my ao3 account). I'd been wanting to do a kind of "spiritual successor" fic to it for ages but after several drafts between during my 18th century satire class, I kind of put it to the side. Cut to years later and I finally had an idea how to approach it aka let's see how we can make it a reversal story. Instead of focusing so much on researching details like I did with Wolfsbane, I just decided to let loose and just keep it within a general late-ish 19th century aesthetic and go wild.</p><p>You don't have to read Wolfsbane to understand this fic, but if you do, how I approached some details will be made clear. <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/2753147">Click here to give it a read</a> and please remember this was my writing from 8 years ago so be gentle....</p><p>Anyway, optional drinking game: take a drink every time there's mention of light sources.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Lord Thanatos has a habit of taking in strays. Perhaps seeing his family legacy of corruption—how they desecrated the position of High Judge for generations with underhanded dealings, spiteful verdicts, ruthless amorality, among others—led him to such merciful behaviors as he single-handedly upended the High Court’s legal functions, forcing the golden scales to sit equally within the palm of his hand. Or perhaps, despite his stoic veneer and elegant words, Lord Thanatos is just soft-hearted. He shelters people indiscriminately: families down on their luck, former convicts willing to start anew, orphans with nowhere else to turn, any who are disenfranchised and ready to surrender to despair. He treats them warmly, feeds and clothes them, gives them work and education in his household and beyond. Lord Thanatos acknowledges the brokenness in them and allows them to be people again.</p><p>Either way, he knows that he’d been lucky. When Lord Thanatos had accepted him and his sister into the household, they had both been newborns smuggled away from a branch of the royal family. They had been well-cared for and held no awareness of things like ominous stars or ill omens or the like. They grew up with many good prospects and plenty of company.</p><p>He was still young and round-cheeked, moments after falling into the small pond at the back of the estate, when they first met.</p><p>“You can call me Tettere. It’s nice to meet you.”</p><p>He should have known then.</p><p>After all, the estate always brings broken people to its doorstep.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>No matter how much he tends to his hair, those blinding pearls with streaks of sunset tumble in wild waves, curling at the ends like stubby brambles. Elef grumbles softly, passing the brush a few more times before inevitably reaching for his thick hair ribbon in defeat. How does his brother do it? Leontius wears his long hair freely and it <em>always</em> cascades artfully behind his shoulders like a proud satin cape. Even Misia, whose hair is opposingly straight despite being twins, has no trouble setting her hair to look like an immaculate snow-laced veil draping down her shoulders.</p><p>Deft fingers tie familiar knots and pull the ribbon into two smooth loops. Elef looks at himself in the mirror and accepts the result, tucking the stray lock of hair that always seems to escape behind his ear.</p><p>This birth family of his, once his older brother had found them and reunited them with their mother, is apparently carved from the same marble block of handsome features. Elef can see the resemblances in the angles of his jaw and the shape of his eyes, but he somehow feels different. It’s not the same difference that separates his half-brother Scorpius from them. Elef had never been able to place it. It’s only in moments like these, the brief and inconsequential moments dancing like flickering candlelight, that he thinks of it again.</p><p>Moments that, like now, are quickly and oft forgotten—especially when a servant knocks on the door and tells him his sister is already waiting in the carriage.</p><p>Misia still has a few days remaining in her winter holiday, but she had promised a friend to return to the dormitory of the women’s university so they can spend some time together before the new semester starts. Elef had offered to accompany her to the train station, wanting to see her off and then pay someone a visit afterwards.</p><p>“You’re really going to visit Tettere again?” Misia asks as they arrive at her platform.</p><p>Elef dutifully holds her luggage while she fishes her purse for the train ticket. “Why not? It’s on the way back from the station so I might as well.”  </p><p>“Doctors are busy people.”</p><p>“He always has time for me.”</p><p>Misia’s lips part halfway before she closes them again with a sigh. “We’re full grown now, Elef. We both know that you can’t keep hounding him like when we were children. You’re only hurting yourself like this, turning your eyes away from what you don’t want to acknowledge.”  </p><p>“Well, that’s my decision to make in the end,” Elef answers. “Also, your ticket is pressed up against your eyeglasses case.”</p><p>They make their way to the conductor, who checks and collects Misia’s ticket. Before she disappears into the train, she gives Elef a final look-over and says, “Spare some time to write to me, won’t you?”</p><p>“I will, I will.”</p><p>He walks back to the carriage well after the billowing smoke disappears from the horizon line. The coachman helps Elef inside—and as he settles against his chair, another moment flits by again.</p><p>Elef is a proper adult now: broad-shouldered and fit, lean muscles carved into that piece of marble chipped away from the family block. Even when he’s built like an ancient warrior statue, his body is still far too small to contain the surging feelings trying to drown him. Lord Thanatos had tempered his soft-heartedness into a righteous armor not easily swayed by gold or steel. Elef’s own worries are trivial in comparison—so why can’t he seem to do the same as his foster father?</p><p>(“It’s because the love the princess holds for the prince is so overwhelming,” a hazy memory of blond hair and apple cheeks in the springtime says.</p><p>He remembers scrunching his face in disdain and saying, “Love sounds scary.”</p><p>The memory smiles like a daisy. “It doesn’t have to be. If you let yourself remain buoyant, it can carry you like the ocean does.”)</p><p>He tells Charon to go to the usual address first.</p><p>During Tettere’s childhood, House von der Stolzenberg in the northwestern territories had crumbled from financial strain. His father had appealed to Lord Thanatos after the noble family’s decline and, thanks to some connections with the former Lady Ludowing and her son also living in the estate, the pair had been given refuge in his name. While his father had successfully reintegrated into society as a businessman over the years, Tettere had studied medicine and has since started a private practice. </p><p>Elef didn’t lie to his sister. Tettere’s home is on the way back, ten minutes from the station and half an hour away from his brother’s manor, so why not stop by for a quick hello?</p><p>A quiet sigh leaves his lips as the carriage trudges down the road towards the city outskirts.</p><p>In the end, his visits are never quick.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>Tettere was at the cusp of adolescence when he first met Elef, who had been soaked through his britches. Instead of mocking him or ignoring him entirely, Tettere had fished him out from the pond and introduced himself.</p><p>His noble upbringing easily showed through his straight posture and squared shoulders, hands folded behind his back and the slight upturn of his chin. Tettere stood like an oil portrait come to life in elegant strokes. Elef knew even then: this type of person is what hymns laud, what poems dedicate several verses to, what paintings and statues try to capture the essence of. Tettere was regal and dignified, yet kind.</p><p>Crybaby Elef, with none of his sister’s charisma or his foster father’s grace, gravitated towards that smile like a sunflower facing light for the first time.</p><p>In retrospect, he’s sure to have caused Tettere plenty of inconvenience when he was younger by trying to plant himself by Tettere’s side when he could. It was cute when Elef would shyly approach him and Mister Stolzenberg during breakfast, asking if it was alright to dine with them while Misia was chatting away with some of the older young ladies that doted on her. It was definitely not as cute when Elef insisted on sitting in during Tettere’s lessons, despite the six-year gap in material. He’s sure that the amount of annoyance he’d caused are innumerable, but Tettere had never mentioned it. He merely smiled his daisy smile and patted the spot beside him, allowing Elef to bask in that sunshine for a little longer.</p><p>Elef had plenty of companions in Lord Thanatos’s estate and he certainly had friends, but Tettere had always been his favorite among them. Naturally, it had hurt when Tettere left to attend a boarding school. He just never expected how much it would hurt—his fingertips reaching for warmth that isn’t there; his chest shriveling like the flesh of rotting fruit, draining him of his childish energy and wonder. Servants and other residents of the estate would whisper in hushed tones about his closeness to Tettere, speculated reasons why the young man had gone to a neighboring province three hours away for his education. At one point, Misia even had to pry him off Orion, who dared to imply that Elef looked like a grieving widow.</p><p>It hurt terribly when Elef had realized how empty he felt without him.</p><p>What burrowed its way into that emptiness had been even more excruciating.</p><p>A hazy memory of blond hair and a daisy smile in the springtime appears briefly against the reflection of the carriage window as Charon opens the door for him. Elef quickly shakes the image from his mind, steels himself as he alights from the carriage and makes his way towards an unassuming terrace house.  </p><p>There’s a spare key hidden in an envelope that’s perpetually in the mailbox, but Elef pauses at the front of the steps and uses the knocker instead. Just to be polite.</p><p>The person who answers is decidedly not Tettere.</p><p>Instead, Elef sees porcelain skin shaped into fine-boned limbs, the delicate slopes of apple cheeks and dandelion lashes curtaining precious sapphires, the memory of his childhood stamped out by spilling ink-black hair and petal lips.</p><p>Like an oil portrait come to life.</p><p>The young lady quirks a brow and asks, “Do you need to see Doctor Stolzenberg?”</p><p>“Oh, uh, it’s not urgent. I wanted to give my greetings while I was in the area, but I’ll just send him a wire later since he’s entertaining guests—”</p><p>Before Elef could politely take his leave, the young lady latches onto his wrist and pulls him past the threshold with alarming strength. It only takes a few steps down the familiar hallway to reach the sitting room door, which the young lady immediately swings open. “Alexander, someone wants to say hello!”</p><p>Inside, he sees hair that shone like the summer sun and eyes like the evening sky. If time had carved Elef’s features from marble, then it had also painted Tettere with the same masterful hand that decorated the heavens. Even when wearing a simple linen shirt and brown slacks with matching suspenders, Tettere retains his stately bearing as he sits in his favorite chair by the fireplace.</p><p>The man in question blinks in surprise.</p><p>“Sorry,” Elef says, turning his gaze to the floor. “I didn’t mean to intrude.”</p><p>That precious daisy smile unfurls from Tettere’s lips. “Nonsense, you know you’re always free to just let yourself in. That’s why I told you where the spare key is.”</p><p>“And have myself mistaken for a common thief? No thanks. You know my luck’s never been that great.” He already has enough to deal with in how people react to his general appearance. Actually, he’s already been casted as many an unscrupulous character throughout his life; he’ll gladly decline any more rumors dangling off his fingers. “Besides, it’s <em>your</em> home. People will talk if I just come waltzing in as I please.”  </p><p>Speaking of wrong ideas—Elef turns back to the young lady and bows his head in greeting. “Apologies for my manners. I should have introduced myself first.”</p><p>“Oh, I already know who you are,” the young lady says. “Alexander has already spoken a fair bit about his dear friend.”</p><p>“I suppose he would. He doesn’t have very many of them to begin with.”</p><p>Tettere huffs a quiet <em>Rude!</em> in mock-affront under his breath. “Since you two are spinning me in circles under my own roof, allow me to exchange formalities in your stead.”</p><p>Gesturing to Elef, Tettere says, “My good lady, this is Mister Elefseus Arcadia. We grew up together in the estate of the High Judge, Lord Thanatos.” And gesturing to the young lady, he says, “My good sir, this is Miss Richilde Weiss. We’ve been seeing each other for quite some time.”</p><p><em>Oh</em>.</p><p>Somehow, Elef keeps face and offers a polite smile. “Miss Weiss, it’s a pleasure to meet you. He’ll surely treat you well.”</p><p>“The pleasure is mine, Mister Arcadia,” Miss Weiss replies, pink lips curling into the barest traces of a knowing smirk. “I hope we can get along too.”</p><p>He knows what had burrowed its way into the emptiness, what nestled deep and wrapped its thick roots around Elef’s chest like a vice—but seeing it bear the forbidden fruit in front of him doesn’t make it hurt any less.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>Tettere has known Miss Weiss for a few months now, Elef writes in a promised letter to Misia. They had first met at the funeral for the late Miss Helene Rosen, to whom Tettere had been physician and secret lover. In coping with their grief over their mutual friend’s passing, they grew to be steadfast companions and were soon drawn to each other. Their relationship is as much a secret as his last one with Miss Rosen, considering the family dynamics with the new Madam Weiss leave much to be desired when it comes to her daughter admitting of holding affections for a poor doctor from a ruined noble family.</p><p>Apparently, there are a lot of things Elef never knew about.</p><p>Like how Tettere had discarded ‘Albrecht’, his birth name, and had it legally changed to ‘Alexander’ before he enrolled to university. Or how Miss Weiss and the late Miss Rosen are two of many women Tettere had been entangled with over the years since he first left the estate for boarding school. Or—as Miss Weiss will tell him the following day when she invites him for afternoon tea, long after Elef sets his pen down and squirrels the letter into an envelope—how those past flames had all succumbed to mysterious ends.</p><p>“You suspect foul play?” Elef asks, topping her cup with a generous pour of cream.</p><p>“Alexander <em>did</em> say you were purported to be an ill omen.” Miss Weiss doesn’t bat an eyelash as Elef startles from his seat. By some miracle, nothing spills from the table. “Oh please, I’m joking. You didn’t even know he began courting people; there’s no feasible way you had anything to do with them.”</p><p>“Could’ve fooled me.”</p><p>“I could have, couldn’t I?” Miss Weiss takes a moment to sip her tea, sighing contentedly before her lips curl into that subtle smirk. “You, on the other hand, aren’t fooling anyone.”</p><p>He expected as much. Tettere has a fondness for the quick-witted and Miss Weiss is sharper than most of the girls who had tried to vie for his heart back at Lord Thanatos’s estate. That and, if Misia is any metric to go by, perhaps Elef really is starting to give away obvious tells.</p><p>“Miss Weiss, why exactly did you call me here?” Elef asks plainly. He’d never been good at keeping pretenses in these kinds of matters, even if it comes across as too bold or too rude. “To stake your claim? Tell me to back off and keep my distance from him?”</p><p>“Let me make this clear, Mister Arcadia: you’re no threat to me,” Miss Weiss says just as plainly. “You love Alexander, but you will never act on your feelings for him because you’ve taken all the consequences into consideration. You love Alexander, but you want his happiness, even at the cost of burying your own. You’re even willing to meet with me, his current lover, in civility and exchange pleasantries knowing that I’m the one who gets to stay in the place that will always be out of your reach. You’re not lacking in any way, Mister Arcadia; you’re simply too kind. I can already tell you’re not the type of man to sabotage relationships—and that’s why I have nothing to fear from you.”</p><p>She sets her teacup aside and looks Elef straight in the eyes with the same light that Tettere would when he’d encourage him. “I wasn’t lying when I said I hoped we could get along. I called you here so we can be allies. Friends, even.”</p><p>Another moment flickers by like a dying ember caught in the evening breeze. He feels like he’s looking at the same canvas that Tettere is painted on. Though she’s not quite as radiant as the sun Elef has grown up following, Miss Weiss has an indelible shine of her own not unlike the stars that twinkle as they please; it only serves to solidify Miss Weiss’s place by his side while Elef’s own marble chips away into the craters of the moon.</p><p>“You don’t have to go so far,” Elef says quietly. “Maybe it’s better if we don’t.”</p><p>Miss Weiss quirks a brow. “Why not?”</p><p>“Compared to you, compared to T… to Alexander, I feel too…”</p><p>“Inadequate? Flawed? You never struck me as the type to be phased by such things, so why are you starting now? No one’s perfect—not you, not I, and not Alexander. We’re all equally broken with just varying degrees of success in hiding it.”</p><p>Pleased with her words of wisdom, Miss Weiss lets her face take on an extremely self-satisfied look. It certainly fits a woman of her youthful disposition, especially as she helps herself to three madeleines and a scone with an unabashed spread of apple jam.</p><p>Elef can’t find it in himself to partake, especially when his mind trails back to a certain question that’s been lingering in the back of his mind throughout the entire conversation.</p><p>“Are you scared?”</p><p>“Of what?”</p><p>“If it’s not me, then the only person left is him, right?”</p><p>“Hm. You have a point there.” Miss Weiss sighs, reclining against her chair in a very unladylike slouch. “A little, certainly. But I’m not an easy catch—I’ve managed to outmaneuver my stepmother this far, after all. Something like this might give me a little thrill.”</p><p>Elef looks down at his cup of tea, long gone cold. “I don’t want to believe he has anything to do with it.”</p><p>“Then don’t,” Miss Weiss says. “Didn’t I say it before? You’re too kind. So, keep being kind and believing in the Alexander you adore. I’ll be skeptical enough for the both of us.”  </p><p>“…It still feels like there’s an underlying motive for all this. You’re being suspiciously gracious.”</p><p>“It’s natural for nobility to surrender to their whims.” Miss Weiss says, waving to a servant in the distance. “You don’t need a reason to want Alexander’s love and I don’t need one to want your acquaintance. Oh, and you can call me ‘Snow’ since we’re friends now.”</p><p>“Not Richilde?”</p><p>“Earning that particular right comes with more time, you know.”   </p><p>He snorts a little. “Fair.”</p><p>The servant approaches them with a freshly brewed pot of tea, pouring Elef a new cup. After he clears the table of old plates and utensils with replacements, they both indulge in afternoon tea proper. The rest of their time together, a hearty two hours and fifteen minutes of idle chatter and exchanges of Tettere’s embarrassing moments at the doctor’s expense, is pleasant.</p><p>“It’s ‘Elef’ for me, by the way. Since we’re friends.”</p><p>In another promised letter to Misia, Elef tells her that Snow’s lips curl into a wide lily smile.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p>                                                          </p><p>The crisp, white winter burns away into the vivid blots of color as the spring roars back to life. Elef had resumed his work within the High Court, having apprenticed as a clerk during the peak of the Malebranche Murders. Every so often, he would accompany Leontius to dinner functions with other noble families and esteemed guests. He had even managed to cross paths with Snow, formally introducing himself and Leontius to her father and stepmother. When asked of their connection, they had both replied, “We happen to see the same doctor.”</p><p>The doctor in question is delighted by this development.</p><p>“Thank you, Elef,” Tettere says one evening when they’re having dinner together, just the two of them.</p><p>“For?”</p><p>“For extending the olive branch to Richilde. I’d wanted to tell you about her for a while, but I just never had the right timing for it.”</p><p>“Honestly, I don’t mind. You chose a special person—of course you’d want to keep her to yourself for as long as you can.”</p><p>“…I can hear you thinking.”</p><p>“Yeah? You know, that means you don’t have enough thoughts of your own.”</p><p>Tettere frowns. “Elef, please. You’re just as important to me as she is. I don’t want you to be made to feel like I’m leaving you behind again.”</p><p><em>You don’t have to report to me about every little thing</em>, he wants to say. Tettere has his own life to live and he should live it without having to worry about Elef’s feelings. Maybe that’s the one thing Elef regrets from their childhood: that, perhaps, he’s shackled Tettere into coddling him without any thought for himself no matter how much time passes. <em>I really was so annoying back then</em>, Elef thinks.</p><p>“I’m all grown up now, Tettere. I know that there are spaces in people’s hearts that can be shared equally; whatever space you have for me can only be mine.” Even if it’s not the space Elef wants, at least he has one to claim. At least it’s still a space Tettere holds dear. “You don’t have to worry about that little boy who fell into the pond anymore. Go ahead and live fruitfully.”  </p><p>The daisy smile blooms, brighter than ever. “Since when has my Elef gotten wise enough that he holds authority to bestow these kinds of blessings?”</p><p>He feels the corners of his own lips tug upwards. “It certainly wasn’t from when you were still around.”</p><p>“Oof. Perhaps working with all those people from the High Court has rubbed off on you a little too much. That sweet little boy from before would never cut me so deeply.”</p><p>The lamplight wavers. “You might be right.”</p><p>It doesn’t matter whether Tettere continues to tie Elef’s past to his present, to overlay the images of his boyhood with the man he currently embodies. Elef will take all that he is given, as long as there’s still one space in Tettere’s heart that’s his and his alone. This will have to be enough.</p><p>The months continue to pass without incident.</p><p>Until suddenly, they don’t.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>Summer blankets the city with an unexpectedly humid heat. Cases and crimes continue to pile up as files and orders and transcriptions reinforce the bricks of the courthouse. Nothing could ever come close to the busyness during the lifespan of the Malebranche Murders and the trial that followed, so Elef works adeptly within this familiar battlefield. It’s enough to take his mind off the letter that arrived at the manor earlier that morning.</p><p>Short and succinct, from Snow: <em>Wager in the afternoon. Will you win?</em></p><p>There were some headaches in the past few weeks, as Elef had found out during a luncheon with their families. A few days ago, it was nausea and some lightheadedness. He told her to go see Tettere, but Snow had insisted it was stress from her home life.</p><p>Looks like something had changed.  </p><p>Evening comes and Elef waves off an invitation to go drinking with his colleagues. Instead, he tells Charon to drop him off a few streets down from Tettere’s home. There’s a store around the corner that his friend fancies; he wants to get a small treat for them to share during dinner. Charon, never the prying type, wordlessly obeys and drives off after Elef alights from the carriage.</p><p>He buys a small bag of apples and walks to the terrace house.</p><p>The evening has dropped its cloudy shroud by the time he arrives. Sticky heat continues to stifle his chest, making the drumming of his heart reach his head as he quietly plucks the spare key from the mailbox. He turns the key and lets himself in just as quietly, making sure to close the door behind him.</p><p>Darkness coats the hallway, the stairwell, the ceiling. Elef barely catches the glimpse of a dim light feebly escaping from the door all the way down. Reaching a hand out to carefully find the wall, he begins to slowly walk down the same stretch of house that he’s walked through hundreds of times. The disconcerting feeling returns with no signs of retreat this time: something is <em>different</em> in this house. Different and very wrong.</p><p>Elef reaches the door at the end of the hallway. He thinks of sunshine hair, a daisy smile—and, with no further hesitation, he swings the door open.</p><p>Tettere looks up from his place on the floor, the evening sky of his eyes clouded over by a terrible storm. “My, your luck really isn’t so great after all.”</p><p>He drops the bag of apples as his gaze falls upon the body draped limply in Tettere’s arms: porcelain skin, fine-boned limbs, cold-tinted lips shaped into a despairing snarl. Even with the expression the way it is, the body is undeniably that of Miss Richilde Weiss.</p><p>A fresh crack of lightning jolts down his spine, rending the image of sunshine hair and daisy smiles asunder.</p><p>
  <em>Will you win? </em>
</p><p>“It’s you,” Elef whispers. “Snow, Miss Rosen, your other lovers—the one who did them all in was you.”</p><p>“Richilde truly loved a good rumor.” He watches Tettere rise to his feet, carrying Snow’s corpse in his arms like a willful bride whose husband blatantly revealed her bad habits to his family. Tettere places her in a chair they had recently refurbished together, arranging her limbs and shifting her face to ladylike perfection. “Which part is truth and which part is fiction? A good actress, much like a good rumor, can sew both parts seamlessly.”</p><p>A doting father, scheming stepmother, seven loyal vassals: all of it paints the portrait of the Weiss family’s darling in garb as pure as her namesake.</p><p>While gossip is beyond the halls of Lord Thanatos’s estate, his brother’s manor is rife with such talk. Loose strings cut from their spools easily coil themselves around the ears of anyone capable of listening; and with the courthouse archives at his fingertips, it’s even easier to split serpentine threads apart. At the bottom of all those layers is a woman burning with rusted copper envy, willing to cast themselves into recklessness to alleviate some boredom once the machinations against her stepmother had concluded.</p><p>“What is easier to believe, Elef? That I fell in love with my former patients, many of whom had conditions and illnesses that they succumbed to? Or that I went out of my way to orchestrate a slow string of murders? Richilde’s words or mine?”</p><p>
  <em>If it’s not me, then the only person left…</em>
</p><p>Tettere huffs out a wry laugh as he moves away from the chair to pick up a stray apple that had rolled close to him, wiping the dust on the hip of his trousers. “Well, I had already known your answer long from the start. You’ve always been impressionable to a stubborn degree. Single-mindedly hold fast to what you think is right. I should have gotten to you first if this was the result it would bring, but I’d wanted to at least spare you from this much.”</p><p>Despite everything in front of him, Elef still wants to latch onto the springtime memory of his youth—to the hand that had helped him up from the pond. There are so many questions he wants to ask, but the only thing that comes out of his mouth is:</p><p>“Why?”</p><p>“Perhaps I was looking for something I knew I could never attain. In the end, it’s all been facsimiles of perfection forged through the hands of a broken man.” Tettere’s teeth crush through the fruit’s flesh with one crisp bite. “Though the reason hardly matters now. A clerk from the High Court had caught me with the corpse of a dead noblewoman. Inspection of her belongings will lead to the discovery of cyanide in her medication, questioning peoples of interest will stitch together the same answer you’ve deduced yourself. Good actress that Richilde had been, the rumor mill will finish the raw edges, leaving a neat little bow to close the case.”</p><p>“We can go home,” Elef says hurriedly. “<em>Our</em> home, with Lord Thanatos. He’ll take you in again, get to the bottom of everything—”</p><p>A twinkling laugh cuts him off. “You shouldn’t bother him for every little thing, friend. Though you’re clearly his favorite out of all of us, High Judges are busy people nonetheless.”</p><p>Cut down like a weed, Elef’s arms hang limply at his sides. Tettere takes another easy bite of his apple as if it’s another evening, as if there isn’t a murder scene blatantly laid out within his home.</p><p>With a coarse voice, he asks, “How can you be so flippant about this…?”</p><p>“What else could I possibly do but concede? I don’t want to die like a dog; I still have some dignity.”</p><p>“So you’re just going to let them take you away? This is grounds for execution!”  </p><p>“Unlike certain folk, I know when I’m cornered.”  </p><p>Elef isn’t like his siblings: he doesn’t have Leontius’s charisma or Misia’s wits or even Scorpius’s cunning to see them through to the other side of this situation. He hardly has any of his mother’s power and he’s a far cry from catching any of Lord Thanatos’s wisdom. In the face of everything, what has life left him with? What shape does Elef’s marble block take?</p><p>All the inconsequential moments he’s felt have suddenly borne fruit, turning into wild despair as his sun is quickly crashing down into the horizon.</p><p>Elef watches Tettere continue to eat his apple, finally making it through enough to reveal the black speck of a seed.</p><p>The flame without the lamp flickers.</p><p>It’s then that he realizes:</p><p>There is still light.</p><p>“You have me.”</p><p>The sleek line of Tettere’s brow quirks upward. “My dear Elefseus, you’re far too kind to stain your hands for something like abetting me with murder.”</p><p>“You know,” Elef says, “that’s what Snow said, too. I wonder if you two really knew me as well as you thought you did.”</p><p>It’s been so long since the willowy syllables of his full first name had been uttered by anyone. If he spends the time to think about the last time it had been used, he would find that it was when he was first introduced to Snow.</p><p>Perhaps there is some credence to the rumors.</p><p>It turns out Elefseus is an ill omen after all.</p><p>The room shifts. He’s knocked Tettere flat on his back on an instant, knocking the half-eaten apple out of his hand. Tettere’s eyes widen as Elef straddles him, hands flying to clutch at Elef’s wrists and body twisting violently to throw him off.</p><p>“You said you didn’t want to die like a dog, so stay still.”</p><p>“Don’t do this,” Tettere pleads, clearly outmatched as Elef’s hands wrap around his neck. “Not for me.”</p><p>“Don’t make me out to be so magnanimous. This is out of my own selfishness.” Elef bears down against the expanse of Tettere’s throat, forcing a choked-out cry. “I’m not that kind, Albrecht. There may be so many places for people in your heart, but there’s only one place in mine—and that place had always been meant for you.”</p><p>He thinks he sees Tettere’s mouth part with a resigned <em>Oh</em>, but it could be a trick of the light. What he does know is that the man beneath him stops thrashing, stops speaking, stops resisting as his hands fall away from Elef’s wrists. Instead, in those last moments, he reaches up to cup Elef’s cheek.</p><p>That hand drops to the floor before he could touch him.</p><p>A facsimile of perfection forged through the hand of a broken man, was it?</p><p>Elef releases the breath he hadn’t been aware of holding. He leans down, gently pressing his forehead against Tettere’s. “I guess we both have to be broken people for us to have wound up at that estate.”</p><p>At the edge of the lamp’s perimeter, Snow’s corpse silently watches them and their world come undone.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>Two bodies are discovered the following day from within the terrace house after a wire from a concerned party. The first body is easily identified as Miss Richilde Weiss. The second body, whose head had been raggedly cut from the neck, is later identified as Doctor Alexander Stolzenberg. No residents from any of the neighboring homes had been aware of what occurred the previous night; almost all of them had gone to the city park for midsummer festivities, save for two pub workers who had gone to their usual night shift.</p><p>Investigators find heavy traces of cyanide in Miss Weiss’s medicine in addition to a spare key tucked away in her pocket. Doctor Stolzenberg’s head remains missing.   </p><p>Out of respect for the individual families, each receive a separate funeral at the end of the month. Misia cancels summer plans with her university classmates to travel home, fearing the worst for Elef in light of the news. It’s not as bad as she had expected when she arrives at the manor, but Leontius tells her that the light has died from their brother’s eyes in grief. Many share the same condolences, especially those from Lord Thanatos’s estate who know how close the pair had been since childhood. Many also express pity, knowing that Elef had been the one to alert the authorities of the crime that had yet to be known—and the first one to see the scene as it unfolded.</p><p>The head still remains missing when Tettere is finally buried. Mister Stolzenberg shakes with a quiet anger at the injustice of it all, powerless to even swear vengeance against his late son’s killer.</p><p>His family dines at Lord Thanatos’s estate after the funeral and leave Elef there for the evening with a few bags, saying he’d wanted to stay in his childhood home one last time before leaving for an extended sojourn to distract him from the heartache. It had been suggested to him by his former coworkers at the courthouse. He’d thought it was a good idea. His family had thought the same.</p><p>Lord Thanatos, of course, knows Elef best when he gets in these moods and allows him to retire to his childhood bedroom without further conversation.</p><p>It is also because he knows his Elef best that Lord Thanatos is not surprised when he catches him holding a disembodied head close to his unmistakably nude body.  </p><p>“My child,” Lord Thanatos says, voice low and impartial, “I needn’t tell you what you’ve done.”</p><p>Elef blinks slowly, breathing deeply with glazed eyes as he thumbs something away from the head’s lips. After a few moments, Elef merely averts his gaze from Lord Thanatos and murmurs, “You don’t.”</p><p>They’re both used to these occurrences. After all, the estate always brings broken people to its doorstep. It fosters them to the best of its ability, but no seed ever guarantees a bloom in the end.</p><p>“I cannot protect you this time.”</p><p>“That’s fine. Come morning, you won’t see us again.”</p><p>The part of him that had helped raise this man wants to say that it’s not too late. But even without the full details of what exactly happened that night, Lord Thanatos knows that only execution awaits.</p><p>Besides, Elef is not above viciously fighting against the heavens themselves to hang onto the things he deems important.</p><p>After a few moments, Elef asks, “Did Charon tell you?”</p><p>“What makes you think that?”</p><p>“Because he came from this place too.”</p><p>Lord Thanatos hums a pitchless note. He knows that Elef doesn’t actually care about the answer. Instead, he turns and opens the door.</p><p>“Goodnight, my child.”</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>The story of the Stolzenberg-Weiss Murder Suicide spreads far beyond the borders of their city. Though no one knows exactly who the perpetrator is, the majority opinion believe that Miss Weiss had murdered Doctor Stolzenberg out of jealousy: disposing of the head that had kissed other women before taking her own life with a poison she concocted from crushed apple seeds.</p><p>Elefseus takes a crisp bite from his own apple, watching the lamplighter make his rounds down the foreign city streets. He looks down at where he runs his fingers through golden tresses.</p><p>“Sun’s setting earlier these days, huh.”</p><p>Not like it matters. He will always have sunshine with him. Seeing Tettere’s stiff expression, Elefseus eases those handsome features into the one from his memories with a quiet <em>There we go</em>. Fondness washes over him; he can’t help but lean down to press a kiss against that daisy smile.  </p><p>Elefseus is far from a good actor, but he thinks he’s decent enough.  </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Darling, I hope you're ready for TTR10 (: </p><p>For everyone else: hey, you made it! I know that was all weird and fucked up, but thanks for reading anyway. <a href="https://twitter.com/jeienb/">Come scream at me on Twitter</a> (or block me if you had a terribly visceral reaction, that's fine).</p><p>Also, if you're somehow interested in reading commentary on the fic, <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ObX-sxvTuETwdK-KX0YiW9Q8QkRHgVBBesKu8s3YlM4/edit?usp=sharing">click here</a>.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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